Vacationing in Chile, Jim and Nancy Pittman of Vancouver were on the 16th floor of a high-rise in Santiago, when the monster earthquake hit that country on Saturday.
Retired, the Pittmans are spending 3½ months in South America. They have no relatives there. They left Vancouver on Dec. 14.
Here are excerpts from an e-mail the couple sent to The Columbian on Sunday.
“We are safe and not injured, although we were scared out of our wits yesterday morning when we began rocking and rolling out of bed sometime after 3 a.m. We understand it is the strongest quake here since 1960. … Oh the adventures of travel.
“Being on the 16th floor of a high-rise apartment building, we really felt the shakes and are sure we felt more than the usual swaying and movement from it than did others on lower levels. The terrifying part of the quake was hearing the rumbling it made as it shook throughout the town. We’ll never forget that sound, along with the crashing of objects falling throughout our large apartment complex, as well as from other places in the neighborhood, and all of the terrified yelling we could hear as the quake was in progress. With the loud crashes we heard we were sure our building was crumbling below. However, we were happy to discover it had not.
“After the shaking subsided, we quickly dressed, grabbed our money, passports, water and jackets, and headed for the stairs. Of course we had no electricity, so we had to leave our apartment door opened to take advantage of the emergency lighting in the hallway. Going down the 15 flights of stairs was scary, as we could see water beginning to seep into the walls, and because of that, some of the stairway lights were out as the water in the walls had already begun to short them out.
“Our intent was to get as far away from high rises as we could, not sit below one that might come crumbling down any second! So we headed five blocks away to a park. There were just a few others there when we arrived, so we were able to secure a bench where we stayed for the next three hours.
“After we stayed away from the apartment for a couple more hours, we decided to go back and see what the status was. As we entered the lobby, we saw our landlady (Elena) there. She had come to check on her four apartments and to see how things were. She informed us there would not be any water or electricity for at least a day, maybe more. She offered to take us to her home and let us stay there, at least for the weekend. She was heading off to Valparaiso, to their country house. Her husband and daughter were already there. Her house at least had water, but no electricity.
“At her house, there was still no electricity as of this morning. … We opted to return to our apartment since we at least had electricity there and we were closer to activities in town. We returned to our apartment around 11:15 a.m.
“We are still having aftershocks. We had a pretty good one this morning before we were out of bed, 5.1 according to information we obtained.
“Jim went down to the store to get more water and some juice. He just returned (huffing and puffing) and said it was a wasted effort. There were long lines of people in the store and they were not letting any more people in. The store was closing until tomorrow. Wonder what we have left to eat here? Now we are seeing on the TV that supermarkets are being looted. If they would just stay open so people could buy their food they wouldn’t have to steal it.”
